Stu Truly

by Dan Richards

  The float pulled forward around the parade’s final corner.

  I was doomed.

  Sunday is meant to be a day of rest. But not that Sunday. I spent the morning in a state of complete worry. Worry that left fingernail marks in both palms from squeezing my fists as I paced back and forth in my room. By noon, I had reached one simple conclusion: I was an idiot. Only an idiot could have believed he’d survive the parade with his meat-eating secret intact. A merely dim-witted guy would have seen through that wishful thinking in an instant. A somewhat intelligent young man would never have gotten into this predicament in the first place. There was no denying it. I was an idiot. No, not just an idiot. I was a blubbering, completely stupid, total loser of an idiot. There’s a difference. And it’s not subtle.

  By afternoon, I couldn’t stand the sight, or smell, of my room. I ran to Ben’s house. I didn’t run for the exercise but to avoid being seen by Becca.

  Ben pulled me into his room. “Dude, you are SO screwed.”

  That was not the encouragement I came looking for. “Shut up.”

  Ben sprawled across his bed. “Classic, man. Classic. You convince her you’re a vegetarian and then show up dressed like a rack of ribs. You should have seen the look on your face when you realized she was standing there.”

  I tried to suffocate Ben with his pillow, but it only covered half his face. “Why didn’t you tell me she was with you?”

  Ben slid his head out from under the pillow and sat up. “Dude, you don’t have a cell phone.”

  There’s nothing worse than being told the obvious.

  “Besides,” he continued, “she and Jackson showed up right before you got there. Their float finished early, so they came back to watch the rest of the parade with us.”

  I flopped onto my back. “I’m such an idiot. How did things get so out of control?”

  “Well, you did lie to her about being a vegetarian.”

  “Shut up.”

  “And wore a meat costume in front of the whole town.”

  “Shut up.”

  “And then flexed your meaty ribs right in front of her.”

  “I said shut up!”

  “I guess things just happen.”

  Ben is the worst giggler ever.

  “What am I supposed to do now?”

  The giggles stopped. “I don’t know, dude. Really, I don’t know.”

  Yeah, neither did I.

  Monday morning arrived like a punch in the gut. Not the sort of punch your friend gives you after you accidentally chain-saw him in half playing Death Intruders. This was the sort of punch that makes you wish you had a 105-degree fever to keep you home until the end of the school year.

  “Ninety-eight point six,” my mother said, pulling the thermometer out of my mouth.

  No such luck. “Maybe I should stay home today as a precautionary measure.”

  My mother furrowed her brows. “Stu, do you have a test today that you didn’t study for?”

  Why would she jump to that conclusion? “No.”

  “Big assignment due?”

  “No.”

  “Square dancing is over—it can’t be that.”

  That’s for darn sure.

  She studied my face. “What’s going on?”

  What’s going on? Becca saw me wearing a rack of ribs costume. She knows I’m a liar. My life is ruined. That’s what’s going on. “Nothing.”

  Her eyes held mine. I could feel them boring into my skull searching for secrets.

  I threw the covers back. “All right, I’m getting up. Just give me a minute.”

  She stood and walked to the door. “Thank goodness. You were starting to scare me.”

  After she left, I considered my options. I could sit with Becca at lunch and pretend nothing had changed. Or I could admit that everything had changed and spend lunch alone in the boys’ room. The first option needed her to be okay with us pretending everything was okay. Judging by the look on her face Saturday that seemed unlikely. That left the second option. I sighed and headed downstairs for breakfast. It would have to keep me going until dinner.

  The ride to school gave me plenty of time to work up a stomach full of butterflies. I had no idea so many butterflies could fit in one stomach. By the time I got out of the car, the fluttering made it hard to walk. Or maybe it was the fact that Ben was pulling on my backpack.

  “Dude. What are you going to tell her?”

  “I’m not going to tell her anything. I’m just going to hide and hope she doesn’t notice me. Got a better plan?”

  Ben laughed, but his face looked pinched. “Dude, we’re meeting at lunch to work on signs for the sit-in.”

  The butterflies swirled into a tornado in my stomach. “Yeah, about that—”

  Ben clapped me on the shoulder. “You better think of something quick.”

  My cheeks felt hot. Why couldn’t my mom take my temperature now? I’d be back home in bed for sure. “Yeah, thanks.”

  The bell rang. He pulled me toward class. “C’mon, it’s just a girl. Right?”

  Yeah, right.

  At lunchtime, I slunk to the back of the cafeteria and sat alone with my hood up and my head down. It seemed better than spending lunch hiding in a bathroom stall. At least I could breathe without gagging. My ham sandwich tasted like sawdust. So did my apple and my candy bar. Even my chocolate milk made my mouth dry. I closed my lunch bag.

  “Dude, what are you doing?” Ben asked, helping himself to the rest of my candy bar.

  “What do you think I’m doing? I’m praying the world ends so I don’t have to face her.”

  “That may be difficult.”

  “Why?”

  Ben moved out of the way. Behind him stood Becca. She placed a pin on the table next to my lunch sack.

  “This is yours,” she said before walking away.

  The message on the pin read Vegetarians Unite! I looked around to see that everyone taking part in the sit-in was wearing one, even Ben.

  “Dude—” Ben started.

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Shut up.”

  Ben returned to his table. I kept my head bowed, searching the floor for a hole to crawl into. Not a hole anywhere.

  That night at dinner my father was all grins.

  “You will not believe the day I’ve had,” he said between mouthfuls of stew. “The shop was hopping all day. At one point we had a line of customers out the door. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “That’s wonderful,” my mother said.

  “I don’t like stew,” my brother added, clearly focused on his own agenda.

  “I don’t like you, either,” I threw in just in case he meant Stu, not stew.

  My mother turned on both of us. “Don’t be rude. Your father has had a good day.”

  “Yay, Dad,” I mumbled to my bowl. I should have been happy for him. But I was stuck like my little brother on my own agenda. I envied the kid. His biggest issue in life was meat being served in broth. For me, my whole life was an issue.

  After dinner, I sat in my room staring at the homework on my desk that wasn’t going to get done. Finally, I pulled the pin from my backpack. Vegetarians Unite! I was neither vegetarian nor united with her cause. The pin went back into my backpack to keep me from using it to poke my own eyes out. Why had I lied to her? Maybe I had just been naive. No, not even I could buy that load of chipotle. Idiot remained the only answer.

  The next day at school, I continued my lunchroom exile. It seemed the only option short of moving away and changing my identity. Maybe when I was older and could drive, but for now I was better off living at home no matter how attractive the name Armando seemed.

  My exile would have been easier if the sounds of giggling didn’t keep coming my way.

  “C’mon, dude,” Ben said, giggling in my ear. “It’s not that bad. She hasn’t even looked your way.”

  That did not help my mood. “Thanks, I feel so much better.”r />
  “You’re making too big a deal of this.”

  I set my turkey sandwich down. “Too big a deal? She thought I was a vegetarian. My dad owns a butcher shop. I can barely stand the sight of vegetables, let alone eat them.” My shoulders slumped. “I’m such an idiot.”

  Ben took a seat. “I admit you screwed up big-time. Even worse than that time you tried to bleach your own hair.”

  My scalp winced.

  “But, dude, you can’t just hide over here forever.”

  Why not? It wasn’t like Ben to get all reasonable on me. Or to even have a point. That had never been his strong suit. Although I had to admit my current plan did seem a bit shortsighted. “Maybe tomorrow,” I threw out to get him off my back.

  “All righty, then.” He stood to go. “Tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow came and went with me convincing Tyler and Ryan to forgo their sudden interest in sitting with girls at lunch. The three of us hunkered down at my new table in the far corner of the lunchroom.

  “What are we doing here?” Ryan asked.

  I rolled my eyes as if he had just asked the dumbest thing ever. “We’re being ourselves. No girls. Just us guys.”

  “We’re helping him hide from Becca,” Tyler added. “Until he can man up and deal with what he did.”

  Nothing could be further from the truth. “Shut up.”

  The three of us sullenly ate together. With the topic of girls being off the table, there didn’t seem much else to talk about.

  Thursday was just about as lame. Tyler made an excuse to leave us for a minute. He went and sat with Ben and the others and didn’t come back.

  “That was a cheap trick,” I remarked.

  “Wish I had thought of it first,” Ryan said, glancing over to where Gretchen sat.

  “We don’t need ’em.”

  Ryan set his sandwich down. “I’m not sitting in the corner all alone for the rest of the year just because you’re afraid of her.”

  That may have been the boldest thing Ryan had ever said. His words struck me like a zombie slap in the face.

  “What am I supposed to do? She hates me.”

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything.”

  Knowing Ryan, I was pretty sure that made two of us. “You should have seen her face.”

  He turned toward me. “You should see yours.”

  Pretty sure he wasn’t talking about my nose. “The whole thing sucks.”

  Ryan nodded. “Yeah. Sucks.”

  In PE, Mr. Snedaker had us sit on the gym bleachers. “Let’s see how your diet has changed since the first time we reviewed your notebooks.”

  I opened mine to the most recent page. My breath caught in my throat. Green beans? I had eaten green beans? And tomato? And raw carrots? And WHOLE WHEAT bread? Wait, that’s right. I had just eaten whole wheat bread at lunch. The shock of it hit me. I LIKED whole wheat bread. When had that happened? I leafed backward through my notebook. The names of other vegetables stared up at me beginning with Joe’s Smokin’ Peas.

  “Mr. Truly,” I heard Mr. Snedaker say. “Any changes since you began tracking what you eat?”

  I nodded, unable to find the words to break the news.

  Ben peered over my shoulder. “This week he’s eaten green beans and tomato and—what the—?”

  “That’s right,” I said proudly. “I tried a piece of kale.”

  Murmurs passed through the crowd. Murmurs of indifference, mind you. No one else really seemed to care. Except I did notice a pair of eyes turned in my direction a few rows over.

  “Well done, Mr. Truly,” commended Mr. Snedaker. “Sounds like some real progress has happened in your food life. What brought about your curiosity in new foods?”

  “Well, sir,” I began. “I, uh, realized there are people who actually like vegetables.” My eyes flicked to Becca and back, not daring to hang there long enough to catch her reaction. “And—I thought, well—maybe I should give ’em more of a chance.”

  The boys behind me snickered. I chose to ignore them.

  “I didn’t even realize until just now when I checked my journal. I guess sometimes things change and you don’t even know it.”

  “Yes, that has absolutely been my hope,” Mr. Snedaker responded, his hands raising to heaven. “There are so many interesting foods, and so many of them are good for you.”

  I glanced back down at my journal, still not believing what was written there. And it was the truth. For the first time in weeks, I felt free of the burden of making up lies to cover up my real self. Maybe I really was changing for the better. I looked up to find Becca’s eyes on mine. She gave me a look that seemed pleased and hurt all at the same time. Then she glanced away.

  I spent the afternoon in my room thinking about everything that had happened recently. First, Becca had shown up. And then my brain had gone all crazy. And now my journal had revealed a shocking interest in vegetables that I never knew existed until I met Becca. It was crazy, as crazy as inviting zombies over for dinner. BTW, don’t do that. Ben and I learned that the hard way in level sixteen of Death Intruders 3.

  Someone knocked on my bedroom door.

  “Yeah,” I grumbled in my best, you-don’t-want-to-come-in-here voice.

  My father opened the door. “Everything okay? You haven’t seemed quite yourself this week.”

  Hadn’t I? What would’ve given that impression? “I’m good.”

  Apparently my tone wasn’t convincing. My father closed the door behind him and took a seat on my bed. “I’m not the most sensitive guy, but something’s going on here. Girl trouble?”

  Why did everyone keep jumping to that conclusion? “Maybe.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  What I wanted was to turn back the hands of time to before Becca moved to town. And keep them there. It had all been so much simpler then. Back then, no one hated me. And even if they did, I didn’t care. “I messed up.”

  “I see,” my father said. He scratched idly at his chin. “The sort of mess-up where you go out with two girls at the same time?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm . . . The kind of mess-up where you try to give a girl a good-night kiss when all they wanted was a good-night wave?”

  “No.”

  “I see.” He scratched harder, thinking. “The kind of mess-up where you steal your best friend’s girl?”

  Geez, there were a lot of ways a guy could mess up. “No. I kinda lied so she would think I was something I wasn’t.”

  “Ah. Like the school jock?”

  Dang, why hadn’t I gone for that? “I wish. I kinda led her to believe I’m a—a—” the truth was hard to admit, especially to my father “—a vegetarian.”

  My father coughed. “I’m sorry, did you say vegetarian?”

  I nodded.

  “I see. You did go for a big one, didn’t you? Couldn’t you have just told her you were the school jock?”

  “She doesn’t seem interested in jocks.”

  “Oh. Then you chose wisely.”

  Yeah, right. “What do you mean?”

  My father smiled. “Well, I just mean as long as you were telling a bald-faced lie, at least you chose one that fit the situation.”

  I mimicked one of my mother’s famous eye rolls.

  He let out a laugh. “I didn’t say it was the best choice. I just meant at least you were trying to get her attention by focusing on what mattered to her.”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that. “It was stupid.”

  His smile turned serious. “Yeah, I don’t deny that. I take it she found out the truth?”

  There seemed no point in covering things up. I spilled the whole story of the days leading up to the parade, and how I somehow believed I’d be able to get away with it without her finding out. I ended with “Clearly, I’m an idiot.”

  “You must really like this girl to be that brain-addled,” my father said, the smile creeping back onto his face. He nudged my knee. “Son, we’ve all been
there.”

  “I am there.”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “True enough. That’s why this is all so confusing, huh?”

  That was for darn sure.

  “Well, let me tell you a thing or two about women,” he continued. “You aren’t ever going to understand them. Nor will you ever stop doing stupid, embarrassing things in their presence. It’s just a fact of life.”

  My head hung. This was not the pep talk I needed.

  “Stu,” my father said, lowering his voice. “You’ve learned a valuable lesson. Be honest and be yourself. If she doesn’t like that, then she’s not right for you.”

  Somehow that did make sense. And sounded a whole lot simpler than the double life I’d been leading. Even if I didn’t believe being myself could work with someone like her.

  He tapped my shoulder. “Just one more question. What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. Becca arranged a sit-in at school tomorrow to protest there not being vegetarian entrées at lunch. All my friends are taking part. But I can’t pretend to be vegetarian now. She knows the truth.”

  My father dropped his head in thought. “You realize it pains me to say this. But why don’t you take part anyway? I’m sure not all your friends are vegetarian and they’re still supporting her cause, right?”

  “Yeah, but none of them lied to her.”

  “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “She hates me to my face.”

  My father stood. “I suppose you’re right. That’s a risk you’ll have to be willing to take.” He crossed the room and opened the door, then stopped. “However, maybe there’s something we can do to help break the ice.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Follow me,” he said, a conspiratorial gleam in his eye, “and I’ll show you.”

  Friday morning, I spent in class debating whether to follow through on the plan I’d made with my father, or go into hiding. He was either a genius or the idiot father of an even bigger idiot son. The genetic likelihood of us both being idiots sent a shiver through me.